MOVIE REVIEW: Snow Falling on Cedars (1999)

Snow Falling on Cedars is a movie that means so much to me, yet had absolutely nothing to do with my current situation when it was released. For one, I wasn’t in a forbidden relationship and there was no open war fought on two fronts. But I can sympathize with the characters in the movie, given the theme of love in a world that will not have it, despite the gains made in society to facilitate it.

Based on the 1994 book by David Guterson, the movie is set in three time periods: pre-World War II, around the middle of the war, and a period ten years later. Our two main characters are Ishmael (Reeve Carney, House of Gucci [2021], “Penny Dreadful” [TV-Showtime]) and Hatsue (Anne Suzuki, Initial D [2005], “The Hot Spot” [TV-NTV]), two kids growing up in a small West Coast fishing town. They would grow up to be lovers, but they could never be together because Hatsue is Japanese-American and Ishmael is White. In their teens, World War II comes to America’s doorstep. All Japanese-Americans had to report to internment camps due to their being a “homeland security risk” in the war against Japan. While Hatsue (Youki Kudoh, Memoirs of a Geisha [2005], Shaolin vs Vampire [1988]) is sent to Manzanar War Relocation Center with her family, Ishmael (Ethan Hawke, Explorers [1985], The Black Phone [2021]) joins the fight and finds himself in the Pacific Theater.
It is this period where the young lovers are changed. Hatsue meets her future husband Kazuo Miyamoto (Rick Yune, The Fast and the Furious [2001], Alita: Battle Angel [2019]), a fellow Manzanar internee who is shipped out to the European Theater and returns. Hatsue would eventually write the letter to end her relationship with Ishmael and marry Kazuo, all at her family’s insistence. Ishmael loses his arm — and his love for Hatsue when he gets the letter — at Iwo Jima. Yet something inside Ishmael still burns…

Fast forward to post-war America: people are still against Japanese-Americans, out in the open and behind closed doors. It all comes to a head when the small fishing town where Ishmael grew up has a murder mystery. A White fisherman was murdered, and the only suspect is the last man to have a land dispute with the man’s family: his Japanese friend Kazuo Miyamoto. The racism in town has got Hatsue and Kazuo’s father Zenhichi (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, The Last Emperor [1987], “The Man in the High Castle” [TV-Amazon Prime], Mortal Kombat [1996]) worried that his son won’t get a fair trial, even with the help of defense lawyer Nels Gudmunssen (Max von Sydow, The Seventh Seal [1957], Flash Gordon [1980], Solomon Kane [2009]). Ishmael, now a newspaper reporter, has evidence that could clear Kazuo’s name, but will his jilted feelings of love for Hatsue stop him from doing the right thing?

The idea that there’s this love story intertwined with the racism of American history being used as a backdrop for a legal drama is absolutely brilliant. When this movie ended, I cried quiet tears. I cried for the happiness and sadness of the characters, and the idea that justice was upheld for all Americans, not just those of a chosen community. Most of all, I cried in recognition of Ishmael’s silent battle fought to quell the feelings in his heart for Hatsue and to uphold a pillar of the newsman’s existence: the truth.
The whole movie was better than all expectations. There was no way Snow Falling on Cedars was going to get anything less than the highest marks from me; it’s an accurate show of how the world works against those who want nothing more than to be happy.

Here be an excellent movie.

CHOICE CUTS:

• The power goes out in the courthouse during the snowstorm and big candles are brought in to shed light on the proceedings. I don’t know what was used to make the film do what it did in those scenes, but it made you pay attention.
• PRICELESS QUOTES: “Fucking Jap bitch.” — Ishmael doesn’t speak throughout most of his war flashback, only doing so when the doctors are removing his destroyed arm.
• Wait, Tagawa’s NOT playing a heavy? It’s a brave new direction for him…
• PRICELESS QUOTES: “They teach their kids to kill! With sticks!” — Horace Whaley (Max Wright, “ALF” [TV-NBC]) makes an ignorant racist comment on the witness stand about Japanese culture.

• James Cromwell (Revenge of the Nerds [1984], Star Trek First Contact [1997], Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom [2018]) plays Judge Fielding, representing for all good actors.
• PRICELESS QUOTES: “Remember: stay away from white boys!” — Hatsue’s mom Fujiko (Japanese actress Ako, “Shogun” [TV-FX]) gives helpful yet racially-biased advice while brushing her daughter’s hair.
• This is the first on-screen film appearance of Anne Suzuki.
• PRICELESS QUOTES: “But how can we trust you now? Question withdrawn.” — a baiting question delivered to the racially biased jury by prosecuting attorney Alvin Hooks (James Rebhorn, Independence Day [1996], The Box [2009]), then withdrawn to not only influence the jury while keeping it off the record.
• FUN FACT: The book has been banned several times since its publishing in 1994 as pornography, due to is sexual content.